Late at night in Konoha, the air was so heavy it seemed water could be wrung from it.
What should have been a peaceful night was now utterly shrouded in a murderous chill.
The gates of the Uchiha Clan Compound were tightly shut.
Outside, the once sparsely manned sentry posts were now packed with tense Konoha Ninja.
"Lord Danzo's orders. Not even a fly gets out!"
A ninja in a Root uniform stood on high, his voice low and hoarse.
At his feet lay several Uchiha sentries, their lifeless bodies sprawled every which way.
Root had made its move.
Though Hiruzen Sarutobi was still hesitating, Shimura Danzō could no longer wait to bite off a piece of flesh first.
"These Uchiha actually dream of taking their Sharingan to the enemy. What irredeemable degenerates!"
Another Root member echoed him coldly, the gleaming short sword in his hand reflecting an aura of death beneath the moonlight.
Suddenly, a faint spatial ripple spread behind them.
"Degenerates?"
"You sewer rats who don't even dare face the sunlight think you're qualified to talk about degeneracy?"
Uchiha Gen'yō stepped out of the void without warning.
His gaze was as cold as ice. As he looked at the bodies of his clansmen on the ground, the fury in his heart was on the verge of erupting.
Though he was a transmigrator, after spending these days with them, he had already come to regard these fiercely protective Uchiha as his own territory.
You dare touch my people?
Then you're courting death!
"Who's there?!"
The Root ninja were shocked. They hadn't even seen how Gen'yō had appeared.
"The one who's going to kill you."
Gen'yō didn't even look them in the eye. He merely raised his right hand slightly.
"Since you like staying in the shadows, stay there forever."
"Kamui: Wide-Area Devouring!"
The swirling pupil in Gen'yō's right eye began spinning madly.
A terrifying suction powerful enough to distort light erupted in an instant!
With him at its center, the space within a ten-meter radius seemed to be brutally kneaded by an invisible hand.
"No! My body!"
The two Root ninja at the front didn't even have time to react.
Under the pull of spatial forces, their arms and torsos seemed to have been shoved into a meat grinder.
Amid a series of scalp-prickling cracks of bone, their screams abruptly stopped.
Their entire bodies turned into clouds of bloody mist and vanished into the center of the black vortex.
The remaining Root ninja were scared out of their wits by the sight.
This wasn't Ninjutsu at all. This was divine punishment!
"Run! Hurry and notify Lord Danzo!"
Someone shrieked, trying to activate the Body Flicker Technique to escape.
But before Kamui, running was nothing but a joke.
"You think you can escape?"
Gen'yō snorted coldly, locking on with his left eye's Kamui.
In the distance, three ninja leaping away at high speed suddenly froze in midair.
Space folded strangely at their waists.
Riiip!
It was like tearing up a sheet of scrap paper.
Without any warning at all, those three ninja were severed clean in two!
Their lower halves were still running while their upper halves had already slammed heavily into the ground, spilling their organs everywhere.
The thick stench of blood instantly filled the entire street.
In just a few seconds, more than ten elite Root operatives had been wiped out!
"Tsk. Dirtied the ground. Now I'll have to trouble the clansmen to clean it up."
Gen'yō took a handkerchief from his pocket and elegantly wiped nonexistent dust from his hands.
His movements were so calm they struck terror into anyone watching.
Just then, a group hurried over.
Leading them was Hiruzen Sarutobi, followed by Utatane Koharu, Mitokado Homura, and more than a hundred fully armed Konoha elites.
When Hiruzen Sarutobi saw the severed limbs strewn across the ground and the masks belonging to Root, his pupils abruptly contracted.
"Uchiha Gen'yō! You actually killed so many comrades from the village?"
Hiruzen Sarutobi's voice trembled with anger, and the pipe in his hand creaked under his grip.
"Comrades?"
Gen'yō let out a long, scornful laugh and pointed at the bodies of the Uchiha clansmen on the ground.
"Hiruzen Sarutobi, open those failing old eyes and look. What's this?"
"Is this how these comrades of yours treat our Uchiha sentries?"
"Or is it that, in your eyes, only that Root trash counts as human, while we Uchiha are livestock you can slaughter whenever you please?"
Every word was a blade, stabbing Hiruzen Sarutobi until his aged face alternated between red and white.
He had been so focused on Root's gruesome condition that he had indeed overlooked those Uchiha ninja.
"This is a misunderstanding. Danzo was just too worried," Utatane Koharu argued from the side.
"Shut your filthy mouth!"
Gen'yō's gaze sharpened, and a wave of killing intent so dense it was almost tangible swept straight over her.
Utatane Koharu felt her entire body tighten. Like prey caught in a tiger's sights, she was frightened into silence on the spot.
"I already said I'd give you three days to prepare the supplies."
"It seems you have no intention of handing them over. Instead, you want to kill off our seeds first?"
Gen'yō slowly walked toward them. His steps were unhurried, yet he placed incomparable pressure on those hundred-plus ninja.
"In that case, there's nothing left to discuss."
"Hiruzen Sarutobi, I'm standing right here today."
"If you want to wipe out the Uchiha, go ahead and bring your men at me."
"But I guarantee that as long as I, Uchiha Gen'yō, have a single breath left..."
"I will wipe all of Konoha clean off the map!"
Overbearing!
Utterly overbearing!
Alone against Konoha's entire highest leadership and elite forces, he had actually openly threatened to slaughter the village.
Yet as he looked at Gen'yō's eerie Mangekyo, Hiruzen Sarutobi fell silent.
He could sense that the man before him wasn't bluffing.
He truly had that power!
"Gen'yō, don't make such absolute statements. There's still room for everyone to work things out."
In the end, Hiruzen Sarutobi was still that master of fence-sitting who preferred to smooth things over.
He took a deep breath, his tone softening somewhat.
"If your Uchiha are unhappy with your treatment, we can discuss it further."
"The Police Force's authority can be returned, and your clan compound can be moved back from where you were pushed out."
"Too late."
Gen'yō cut him off coldly.
"I said, within three days, repay tenfold the blood we've shed over these years and the supplies you've swallowed up."
"Otherwise, what you see won't just be these corpses."
"It'll be the entire Hokage Building collapsing!"
Gen'yō turned around, presenting his back to more than a hundred ninja brimming with killing intent.
"Now take this trash's corpses and get lost!"
Hiruzen Sarutobi's fists loosened, then clenched again, before finally dropping helplessly.
He knew this battle would not happen today.
Once fighting broke out, even if Konoha won, it would be gravely weakened and become easy prey for its neighboring countries.
"Let's go."
Hiruzen Sarutobi spoke hoarsely.
Konoha's forces withdrew in disgrace.
This was probably the most humiliating scene since Konoha's founding.
Yet at the rear of the group, a certain madness flickered in Shimura Danzō's eyes.
"Sarutobi, you've grown old. Too cowardly."
"Since you refuse to act, then I, the root, will eradicate this root of trouble once and for all!"
Meanwhile, inside the Uchiha clan, the clansmen who had witnessed everything erupted in earth-shaking cheers!
"Lord Gen'yō is mighty!"
"To hell with those Konoha bastards!"
As Gen'yō listened to those voices, his mind remained perfectly clear.
This was only the calm before the storm.
He looked at the system panel.
Clan Procreation Points: 2,500! Next stage: unlock clan base construction.
"Ōnoki, you should have received the news by now, shouldn't you?"
A faint smile of a successful scheme rose at the corners of Gen'yō's mouth.
Then how would the Third Tsuchikage, known as the old fox, respond?